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The tone is set from the opening scene as legendary director Ernst Lubitsch effortlessly sets up the duality of one perfectly happy marriage contrasted with another couple in a perpetual state of grimly endured misalliance. The Marriage Circle is full of scenes with a sense of unspoken formality, of a mutually antagonistic marital standoff that has been going on for years. The move/countermove rhythm slightly anticipates the slow, tit-for-tat rhythms of Laurel and Hardy, but instead of...

Long before he became known as the "Man of a Thousand Faces," Lon Chaney quickly gained attention for being one of Hollywood's prominent character actors as these outstanding early examples of Chaney's unique talents in acting and makeup clearly attest. A visual treat from gifted director Maurice Tourneur, Victory features Chaney as the villainous Ricardo who is out to steal not only another man's fortune, but also the lovely Seena Owen. The first of ten films Lon Chaney made with director Tod...

For the five years between 1908 and 1913, D.W. Griffith directed some 450 films for the Biograph Company, delivering at a rate of two or three films per week. These films, one and two reels in length, are sometimes regarded as apprentice works, films in which Griffith borrowed, invented, and perfected the forms and techniques that he later used to such memorable effects in The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), Way Down East (1920), Orphans of the Storm (1921), and Isn't Life...

The youngest president in our nation’s history, who brought an unprecedented excitement and power to the office, the life of America’s 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt, makes any fiction pale by comparison. His was the life of a magnificent maverick – a man of enormous popularity and legendary achievements. From the sidewalks of New York to the frontiers of Dakota, from San Juan Hill to the White House – he saw it all and changed the country. Dynamic leader, Explorer,...

At once an invaluable photographic record of life in Weimer Berlin and a timeless demonstration of the cinema's ability to enthrall on a purely visceral level, Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (Berlin, die Symphonie der Grosstadt) offers a kaleidoscopic view of a single day in the life of a bustling metropolis. Carl Mayer (The Last Laugh), influenced by the naturalistic Kammerspiel movement, envisioned "a melody of pictures" sprung from daily reality instead of the stylized artificiality of...

Cecil B. DeMille directed this risque all-star revue of decadence which must have been jaw-dropping in 1921 and which remains astonishing today, although for entirely different reasons. Anatol de Witt Spencer (Wallace Reid), as incredibly wealthy as he is naive, and his child-like bride, Vivian (Gloria Swanson), are on their honeymoon. At a posh speakeasy he spies his high school sweetheart, Emilie (Wanda Hawley), from Pompton Lakes, New Jersey (DeMille’s own hometown), who is obviously...

A sly, bouncy comedy set in the back alleyways and sunlit avenues of 1930s Paris, Mauvaise Graine (Bad Seed) is the remarkable directorial debut of Billy Wilder, the sharp-witted, inimitable creator of such American classics as Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment and Double Indemnity. Shot in France during Wilder’s migration from Germany to the U.S., Mauvaise Graine centers around Henry Pasquier (Pierre Mingand), the spoiled son of a wealthy doctor, who discovers high-octane thrills,...

All My Babies (1952) was selected in 2002 by the Librarian of Congress as a "culturally, historically, and artistically significant work" for permanent preservation in the National Film Registry. This beautiful film is the story of "Miss Mary" Coley, an African-American midwife more than half a century ago in rural Georgia. Its production sponsored by the Georgia Department of Public Health as a demonstration film for illiterate "granny" midwives, All My Babies quickly transcended its initial...

Curtis Harrington is widely regarded as one of the most important avant-garde directors of the 1940s, as well as an early influential figure in what would come to be known as ‘New Queer Cinema.’ This publication is a joint effort between Flicker Alley and Drag City featuring restorations carried out by the Academy Film Archive on a single-disc Blu-ray, comprised of six short films by the late experimental filmmaker, as well as bonus interview footage and rarely-seen early works....

Inspired by the 1938 report of the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee’s investigation into the repression of labor organizing, Leo Hurwitz and Paul Strand’s biting and beautiful Native Land (1942, though largely shot between ’37 and ’39) combines documentary footage with staged reenactments to depict the struggle of trade unions against corporations, their spies and contractors. Legendary singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson narrates the film through words and...

Tol'able David is a magnificent film, carefully transferred from the best available elements, and starring the great Richard Barthelmess (Broken Blossoms) in the title role. This rural adaptation of the David and Goliath tale chronicles the hero's passage into adulthood as he confronts three crooks looking for trouble. When the story opens, David Kinemon, the youngest son of tenant farmers living in small-town West Virginia, yearns to be seen as an adult. His youthful antics, however, prevent...

"Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas upon which the women paint their dreams." - Rudolph Valentino, 1923 Women fainted in the aisles when The Sheik was released in 1921. The titled Lady Diana Mayo (Agnes Ayres) is carried into the desert by an Arab chieftan, Ahmed Ben Hassan (Valentino), who takes one look at her and wants her, right then and there. Filmed on the heels of women's suffrage, Lady Diana was presented as a strong-willed...